Journal article
Language specificity in cortical tracking of speech rhythm at the mora, syllable, and foot levels
Scientific Reports, Vol.12, pp.1-12
2022
PMCID: PMC9356059
PMID: 35931787
Abstract
Recent research shows that adults’ neural oscillations track the rhythm of the speech signal. However, the extent to which this tracking is driven by the acoustics of the signal, or by language-specific processing remains unknown. Here adult native listeners of three rhythmically different languages (English, French, Japanese) were compared on their cortical tracking of speech envelopes synthesized in their three native languages, which allowed for coding at each of the three language’s dominant rhythmic unit, respectively the foot (2.5 Hz), syllable (5 Hz), or mora (10 Hz) level. The three language groups were also tested with a sequence in a non-native language, Polish, and a non-speech vocoded equivalent, to investigate possible differential speech/nonspeech processing. The results first showed that cortical tracking was most prominent at 5 Hz (syllable rate) for all three groups, but the French listeners showed enhanced tracking at 5 Hz compared to the English and the Japanese groups. Second, across groups, there were no differences in responses for speech versus non-speech at 5 Hz (syllable rate), but there was better tracking for speech than for non-speech at 10 Hz (not the syllable rate). Together these results provide evidence for both language-general and language-specific influences on cortical tracking.
Details
- Title
- Language specificity in cortical tracking of speech rhythm at the mora, syllable, and foot levels
- Authors
- Varghese Peter (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - LegacySandrien van Ommen (Author) - University of GenevaMarina Kalashnikova (Author) - Western Sydney UniversityReiko Mazuka (Author) - Duke UniversityThierry Nazzi (Author) - Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueDenis Burnham (Author) - Western Sydney University
- Publication details
- Scientific Reports, Vol.12, pp.1-12
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date published
- 2022
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-022-17401-x
- ISSN
- 2045-2322
- PMID
- 35931787; PMC9356059
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Organisation Unit
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Health - Psychology; School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99659593502621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
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- Web Of Science research areas
- Neurosciences